One of the principal problems with which descriptive bibliography has
to contend arises from the fact that books are made up of smaller units,
each with its own separate history. The book as a whole may be regarded
as a unit by the bookseller or the book-buyer; but, as with other
manufactured products, its component parts are the units at earlier stages
of production. Variations can therefore easily occur among copies of what
is supposed to be the same "book," as a result of differences in the
manufacturing history of the component parts or differences in their
placement in the finished product. Bibliographers have given a great deal
of attention to this problem in connection with the letterpress sheets in
books and have classified the variations that may occur into those that
produce "issues" and those that produce "states."[1] Mixtures of sheets from different
impressions or of gatherings with canceled and uncanceled leaves are
difficulties that
bibliographers are accustomed to thinking about in a formal way.
Much less theoretical discussion has been devoted to the similar
problems that are likely to occur when engravings, lithographs, and other
materials produced separately from the letterpress sheets are intended to be
bound with those sheets to form completed books. It is perhaps natural that
variations among copies of the plates used to illustrate an edition of a work,
or variations in the placing of those plates in different copies of the edition,
have not generally been taken up in conjunction with variations in
letterpress sheets. Inserted plates do seem to be further removed from the
sheets than, say, a cancel leaf (or a whole cancel gathering) that was
likewise printed separately from the rest of the sheets and inserted. One
reason, of course, is that they normally result from a fundamentally
different process of reproduction. When illustrations and
text are produced by the same process—as when wood blocks are
used
with type (both relief processes)—there is no necessity for printing
the
illustrations separately and inserting them. But when, for example,
engravings are to be combined with a text printed from type, the
illustrations and text must be produced separately, since one results from
an intaglio process and the other from relief. They would not only be
printed on different kinds of presses but perhaps even in different printing
shops and on different grades of paper. Furthermore, inserted plates, if
their content is visual rather than verbal, represent not merely a different
medium of reproduction from the text but a different medium of expression
as well. They also often have a life independent of the text they are
combined with in a particular edition. However, despite the natural
tendency to think about inserted plates as a separate question from the
complexities associated with the letterpress, it is important in
a bibliographical context to see the plates as but another example of a larger
problem: the potential for variation produced in books by the joining
together of discrete elements, whether they are gatherings, cancels, plates,
or publishers' casings. Plates may indeed have an independent existence and
be treated by art historians as separate entities. But when they are included
in books as part of the publisher's conception of what the books are to
consist of,
[2] bibliographical
descriptions of those books must take them, and any variations associated
with them, into account.
In some books, of course, it is hardly appropriate to call the
non-letterpress portions "insertions," for they may constitute the bulk of the
books. A volume showing an artist's work in the form of engravings, or an
atlas of engraved maps, or a tune-book of engraved music, for instance,
might have a letterpress preface. Such books are likely to be discussed and
described by art historians, cartographic historians, and musicologists, who
bring to the task the traditions and vocabularies of their own fields, often
derived from thinking about the engravings as separate pieces. That their
language is sometimes different from that of bibliographers accustomed to
dealing with printed books may be an inconvenience but is perhaps not a
serious matter, since usually one can quickly learn to make the necessary
adjustments. What is more important is that terminology reflects an
underlying approach to the material; bibliographers and cartographers, for
instance, may find themselves talking
at cross purposes, even when they think they know how the other group
uses certain words, because they may not share a single conceptual
framework. There has in recent years been some discussion among both
cartographers and musicologists about the classification and description of
books in their fields, and there has been a somewhat longer tradition of
concern with bibliographical description on the part of those concerned with
illustrated botanical and zoological books. Illustrated books in general have
always received a certain amount of attention, but I think it is fair to say,
judging from booktrade activity and library exhibitions, that interest in them
has never been higher than it is at present. The moment seems propitious,
then, for encouraging interdisciplinary discussion of the problems of
bibliographical description that are common to all books with plates. A
consolidated approach will produce sounder advances and be of greater
benefit to all who deal with books than a
situation in which each field considers the problem independently. In this
spirit, I should like to discuss what seem to me the two major questions: the
first, more theoretical and conceptual, is what relation individual plates,
with their own states and variations, have to the variant issues of the books
in which they appear; the second, more methodological, is what
considerations are involved in devising a system for recording the
non-letterpress elements of a book in a bibliographical description. Much
of what is said will have had its origin in thinking about books that join
engravings and letterpress; but the principles involved ought to be
applicable to any books that bring together materials produced by different
graphic processes.
